Israel

Update: May 2012

The Public Utility Authority of Israel slashed solar equity returns in half from 14% to 7%. The new rate will be 69 agorot (US$0.17) per kilowatt hour down from 90 agorot (US$0.23). However, both the Authority and Energy and Water Ministry have stressed that the regulation applies only to non-domestic installations of up to 50kW, connected to the grid by August 1.

Update: December 2011

In addition to a small-scale rooftop program, a PV-dedicated scheme for 300MW of medium-sized ground-mounted and commercial rooftop systems from 50kW up to about 12MW could soon be joined by a program for supporting 500MW of larger projects for the high-voltage grid. Israel’s Public Utilities Authority (PUA) says as of mid-May 2011 more than half the 300MW scheme – 177MW from 114 projects - had already been approved for connecting to the distribution grid.

Presently, the FiT rate for 51kW to 12MW installations is dependent on how much the high voltage grid can handle. For the 51kW-12MW rate, it will drop 5% when set capacity or year-end is reached - whichever comes first. Further to that, the 12MW cap is stilll awaiting ministeral approval although it is expected to be all for PV.

History

The Israeli solar market has been broken down into three segments: small, medium and large installations. Small installations of up to 50KW do not require power purchase agreements (PPA) and have been proliferating since the feed-in tariff was announced in 2008.

Medium installations of 50KW to 5MW as well as larger installations of 5MW and up do require a PPA however. The medium and large solar fields represent the state's efforts to fulfill a government decision to produce 10% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 5% by 2014.

1. The propsed cut in Feed In Tariff from 43.3p to 21p/kW from April Ist is rincoadan & greater than 50% since the 43.3p figure will rise with CPI from April. A 30% reduction would be acceptable >50% is not. 2. Registration for new systems must be completed by December 12th & this means that virtually all installations started after November 1st will fail to meet this target since registration can take 6-8 weeks partly due to Government Dept involvement. Far fairer would be a registration completion date of March 12th 2012. The existing proposal could kill off 80% of solar instalation firms immediately. 3. To have a registration completion date two weeks before the end of the consultation document appraisal period cannot be legal. 4. Currently for home systems of less than 4kW output the energy companies pay an exit tariff of 3.1p/kW. Surely there is a case for raising the exit tariff rate to 6 or 7p/kW & payable on 75% of our production rather than the current 50% which doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. 5. The majority of the population are lukewarm over green energy saving proposals, but for home solar panel installations there has been tremendous enthusiasm. The current tariff reduction proposals will kill this off .6. Finally why the moral objection to the existing generous tariffs for home solar panel installations when landowners who install wind turbines are paid subsidies at an obscene level. Joe Bloggs is not to be allowed to profit, but Lord Joe Bloggs is. This is discimination.Posted by Yuvaraj on 2012-04-09 17:17:21

Now that the PV industry has unquestionably entered a new growth phase, all eyes are on which technologies will win through into the mainstream of PV manufacturing. PERC, n-type, p-type bifacial, heterojunction – all have become familiar terms in the ever-growing constellation of solar cell technologies. The question is which will offer manufacturers what they are looking for in improving efficiencies and cutting costs.

Although the past few years have proved extremely testing for PV equipment manufacturers, falling module prices have driven solar end-market demand to previously unseen levels. That demand is now starting to be felt by manufacturers, to the extent that leading companies are starting to talk about serious capacity expansions later this year and into 2015. This means that the next 12 months will be a critical period if companies throughout the supply chain are to take full advantage of the PV industry’s next growth phase.